Getting Started With The Blues

This is the second article in a series for beginning jazz guitarists. In the last lesson, I gave you what I considered to be the 8 Essential Jazz Guitar Chords. I consider them essential because they can be used right away to play through a number of jazz guitar tunes. Well, now that you’ve learned the chords, it’s time to start applying them to our first chord progression: The Blues. But before we get into the practical, here’s kind of a long but important preface:

Why Start With The Blues?

I know what you’re probably thinking — “I don’t even like the blues that much” or “I’ve been playing the blues for 20 years. I’m tired of that. I want to play jazz”. Just stick with me here. There are a number of reasons we should start out with the blues—probably too many to go over in this article, but here are a some important reasons:

1. The Blues Is And Will Always Be An Integral Part Of Jazz Music.

There’s no getting around it. Blues and jazz are like beans and rice, coffee and donuts, or french fries and thousand island dressing (don’t laugh. It’s actually a good ketchup subsitute!) Anyway, you get my point. Blues and jazz music just goes together. Blues came before jazz historically and in many ways jazz was derived from it. So, I think it’s just important to accept that fact and move on—but here’s the good part:

Nobody’s saying that you have to learn all styles of the blues going back to when Louis Armstrong first pick up his horn or to wail on Lucille like BB King. That’s not necessary. It’s good to have an understanding of those styles but what’s most important is that you know how to play the blues like a jazz musician plays it. That’s critical. There are a number of key differences between the way a traditional blues musician play the blues and the way jazz musicians play it. These differences will become clearer as we move into other lessons.

2. Lay People Want to Hear the Blues

Like I mentioned before, you may have started out playing traditional blues guitar. And I’m sure that you are aware that there are a lot of people out there that like the blues. I’ve always accepted this as reality and tried to use it to my benefit instead of whining about it. I mean let’s face it, most music listeners today are not jazz afficionados or experts. Not even close. They might have a few jazz cds in their collection—maybe Miles Davis’, “Kind of Blue” and a couple David Sanborn cds or something. Well, if they happen to stumble into your gig at the local coffeehouse, and they hear you playing some far out Coltrane meets Ornette Coleman stuff, how long do you think it’ll be before they say to themselves, “Maybe I’ll head over to the local Starbucks instead”?

Believe me, not long.

For most people, that stuff’s too weird sounding. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking Coltrane or Ornette. I just think that sometimes you’ve got to come back to something that’s familiar to everybody. Everybody has heard the blues, it’s familiar and most people can relate. Most people just want to listen to something that makes them feel good. There’s nothing wrong with that.

So, embrace the blues and learn to play it as well as you can. Your audience will thank you.

3. It’s All Transferable

The really great thing about the blues is that practically everything you learn how to play over a blues tune can be transferred in some way to other tunes that you learn. For example, many blues licks when played tastefully and appropriately, fit in very well with jazz standards. When you learn how to intertwine your blues melodic vocabulary with your other jazz vocabulary, you’ll be well on your way to making great strides in your journey to jazz guitar proficiency.

4. Other Musicians Will Think You Suck if You Can’t Play The Blues

Finally, if there’s any reason to learn to play the blues well (the way jazz musicians play it), it’s because you won’t want to look lame in the eyes of your fellow musicians. It’s just an accepted fact among better jazz musicians that the blues is where you “cut your teeth”, so to speak. And if you can’t play the blues, you just won’t get that much respect.

Good luck on your jazz guitar journey. Next time we’ll, get on with more practical applications of using the essential jazz chords over blues tunes.

Leon

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